WombatNation

One of the many pleasures of our September trip to Europe was the thermal baths at Szchenyi in Budapest. The building was beautiful and the number of baths was amazing. Hanging out in the enormous outside thermal pool as the steam lifted into the night skies was particularly awesome.

Here’s a photo of me enjoying the baths.

Alright, alright, this wasn’t at Szchenyi. It’s in Yamanouchi, Japan (Photo by EPA at http://telegraph.co.uk). And those are macaques, but surely you recognize the resemblance.

Maybe I just haven’t been noticing all along that major US airlines are flying rust buckets, but when I looked out the window of a recent United Airlines flight from Houston to San Francisco, I was pretty amazed to see the sorry state of the wing. A few patches of paint had peeled away to expose what appeared to be rust and quite a bit of the upper surface of the wing appeared to have only the thinnest layer of paint remaining.

I went to the gorgeous Grand-Lake Theatre in Oakland tonight with wife and friends to see Quantum of Winter Solstice. I was totally expecting an educational film on astronomy, so the guns, car chases and boring villains were quite the surprise. However, I did take solace in the kick-out-the-jams performance of the organ player who rises up from the orchestra pit with his Mighty Wurlitzer Organ and then descends again just before the movie starts. That’s something you don’t get at the 38-screen multi-megaplex at the suburban mall.

Spoiler Alert:

I accidentally wrote Soiler Alert, at first. But that would be more apropos to the Baby Brigade at the Parkway Speakeasy.

Bond movies often have intriguing villains and well thought out storylines that meaningfully build to a climactic conclusion. Well, before the bit where Bond gets busy with the beauty pageant contestant, martial arts expert, nuclear physicist, gun/knife toting woman he’s been fighting/flirting with for most of the movie. Quantum Solace, in contrast, seemed to primarily be about Bond’s quest for revenge over a dead girlfriend being played out indirectly against a poorly explained pack of bad guys who seemed to be wedged sideways into the plot because there simply “has” to be an evil cabal in every Bond flick.

And usually the axis of evil has cooked up some plan that will result in the annihilation of huge numbers of people unless they get paid a huge ransom. Or will simply result in the annihilation of huge numbers of people because the bad guys are unrepentant misanthropes. However, Dominic Greene of the bashful evil supergroup Quantum has his sights set a bit lower. In the midst of arranging for a military coup in Bolivia, he tricks the new dictator into agreeing to pay double the going rate for municipal water.

WTF??? That’s the frickin’ evil plan? Is Quantum the secret name of EBMUD? After all, they raised our rates. I don’t think it was double, though. Heck, the real life Aguas del Tunari consortium in Bolivia raised rates by 35% after taking control of the water supply.

There’s has been a long history of water issues in Bolivia. In fact, when the little bit of a plot that was there played out and revealed a dictator trying to come back to power, I immediately thought of General Hugo Banzer.

An amusing aside for me was that Greene ends up being left by Bond to die in the Atacama desert (footage was shot in Chile rather than Bolivia) with a can of motor oil to drink when he gets thirsty. Many years ago Sandra and I were stranded in the Atacama desert when the truck that our guide was driving completely broke down before dawn on the way to the geysers near San Pedro de Atacama. Fortunately, the driver’s thermos of hot tea was more refreshing than motor oil. We also had to walk only about 7 miles before being picked up and brought back to town.

In September when we were in Bled, Slovenia, I spotted this ramp at the main intersection in town. While I’m, of course, happy to see that the main shopping area is accessible to people in wheelchairs, I was equally happy that bicycle racers are also welcome and accommodated for. Hopefully everyone queues up single file, though.

We take a train from Budapest to Vienna this morning. Budapest has been fantastic, though the weather was not always so great, chilly and rainy at times.

We had a wonderful stay this week at the Danube Guest House. Bob and Zoli have been the perfect hosts. They were gracious, helpful, informative and kind. Our room was large, well furnished and very clean. Breakfast was simple, healthy and delicious, especially the croissants, and the Krups espresso machine reminded me of my beloved Capresso machine at home. Staying at the Danube Guest House is an incredible value, especially given the great location of this B&B in central Pest. Highly recommended.

Like always, soccer is playing an important part in our trip. Two nights ago after dinner at Mosselen Belgian Beer Cafe (great beer selection, but not as good as The Trappist back home in Oakland) we watched the last few minutes of several Champions League matches at Champs Sports pub just a few doors down from the Danube Guest House. Last night after dinner at Menza we watched the second half Everton versus Standard Liege in a UEFA cup match.

Tonight is the big highlight, though, as we have tickets for Rapid Vienna versus SV Reid in Vienna. Rapid Wien is in first place in the Austrian Bundesliga and scoring a lot of goals, so it should be exciting. Fortunately, it looks like the earlier forecast of rain and cold has changed to partly cloudy and cold.

Saturday morning we leave for two weeks in Hungary, Vienna, Slovenia and Croatia. We also sneaked in a twenty-three and a half hour layover in Amsterdam on the way home. They wouldn’t let us make it more than 24 hours without charging us more.

Our niece is spending the fall semester in Budapest, so we start out there for about 5 days, probably doing a few day trips out to places like Szentendre. We spent a few days in Budapest two years ago before the World Cup and loved it, so we’re really looking forward to going back.

She’s got a great apartment in Pest near the Erzsébet bridge (yeah, yeah, I should either use hid or Elizabeth, not a Hungrish combination) and found a new, cool sounding B&B nearby called the Danube Guest House.

We head for Vienna on Friday, where we’ll see an Austrian Bundesliga match between Rapid Vienna play SV Reid that night. We only got to spend one day there on our World Cup trip, so another two days well be nice. I’ve been practicing my German again in anticipation. It’s nice to be able to read most of the signs and the explanations at museums in the native language, even if most everyone speaks very good English. And my chants at the soccer match will be more believable in the right accent.

Sunday we take a train to Bled, Slovenia. Lake Bled is a gorgeous sub-alpine lake with an island in the middle and a castle on a cliff. It’s a relatively easy walk or bike ride around the lake, you can rent rowboats to take out to the island, and they have wonderful pools and spas.

Then we’re off to Ljubljana, Slovenia, and then to Zagreb, Croatia. Unfortunately, we can’t stay in either city as long as we would like.

I took Nick to the vet yesterday and it turns out that Dr. Braun and his wife went on a similar itinerary this spring. Just how often do you find yourself getting recommendations for restaurants in Zagreb from your vet (all of my dedicated Croatian readers aside, of course)?

Some of wife’s and my greatest memories (and stories) come from our travels in Bolivia. Today’s NY Times has a really good article that focuses mostly on the salt flats near Uyuni and “The Death Road” from La Paz to Coroico.

The Salar de Uyuni is so bizarre that I have always found it difficult to explain well to others. Ethan Todras-Whitehill does a really nice job of capturing the essence of the Salar, though. It’s a bit overwhelming to stand on a 4,000 square mile plain of crunchy salt, with tall mountains barely visible on the horizon in most directions. The mountains look deceptively small, because the terrain is so flat and unchanging for so far that you can’t quite tell how far away they really are.

The slideshow accompanying the article has a photo of a room in one of the hotels made from salt blocks, but I prefer my photo of the dining room at Palacio de Sal.

Ethan also writes about doing a downhill bike ride on the Death Road, which a friend of a co-worker is also doing soon, though on a motorcycle. I can hardly wait to hear about her experience after she returns. I was shocked at first to hear about the ride, but then I learned that a new road for cars and trucks opened in March 2007, so the dangerous, narrow road is now shared only with a small amount of local traffic. During our trips in 1993 and 1999 on that road, the risk of collision with another car or truck was very high. I doubt my heart rate dropped much below 120 during those drives. I’m sure that it’s still a white-knuckle descent, though. Even if you’re not on a ridiculously narrow gravel road (which supported two-way car and truck traffic when we did it!), winding around hairpin turns, driving through waterfalls that wash across the road, and staring over the edge down multi-thousand feet sheer cliffs, a 12 thousand foot drop over 40 miles is pretty steep.

This photo shows the view from Coroico back to the road. The part of the road you see is probably the safest, least scary, segment. The road twists around the corner and then hugs the mountainside as it twists up and around into the clouds.

While in Orlando visiting a prospective client this week, I stayed at the Peabody Hotel. This chain of three hotels is famous for having ducks march down a red carpet and hop into a fountain in the morning. In the late afternoon, they hop out and head back up the red carpet to a more private location in the hotel.

In case it’s not obvious, the photo to the left is the roof of part of the hotel.

I had seen video footage of the ducks doing a leisurely waddle down the red carpet at the original Peabody in Memphis, but the Orlando ducks were doing something closer to running. And I swear I was not making any comments about making my famous smoked duck and andouille sausage gumbo. At least, not in a language they would have understood.

I’m in the middle of a trip to Austin and San Antonio to visit relatives and get up close and personal with some BBQ. And Mexican food. And chili and chiles. A short version of all this is on my wombatnation page at Pownce.

First up was a trip to the Texas Chili Parlor for a large Double XX frito pie. Traditional Texas style chili contains no beans, and the Texas Chili Parlor is all about tradition. A longtime favorite of Texas legislators working at the nearby Capitol building, the Chili Parlor was also a regular destination for me and a couple of other chili fanatics with whom I worked at the Applied Research Labs.

That evening I headed over to Chuy’s with my family for a Chuychanga. Picture a femur sized burrito constructed from a fried tortilla wrapped around lots of chicken and melted cheese, with a healthy dose of green chile sauce on the side. Enough calories for a family of four. For two days.

BBQ made its first appearance in my esophagus during a trip to The Salt Lick down around Driftwood. The brisket was great, although I thought they drowned it in sauce. The sauce was very good, but it almost overpowered the delicious brisket. I wasn’t a big fan of the beans (too bland), but everyone else liked them. I did like the potato salad (my favorite German style of slightly warm with big, firm chunks of potato and a simple mustardy coating and no pickles), though no one else was a big fan of it. The sausage was more of a bratwurst style than what I normally find at a BBQ restaurant.

The next day I had a yummy BBQ chicken sandwich at Ruby’s BBQ. Technically speaking, you don’t BBQ chicken - you either smoke it or grill it. Maybe you then put some BBQ sauce on it. Ruby’s is notable for serving natural (i.e., no antibiotics or hormones, etc.) meats from Coleman Ranches. I would normally get the brisket, but I knew we were headed to Iron Works for dinner. The chicken sandwich is still a great choice, especially if you prefer moist chicken breast meat.

Just as at The Salt Lick, I ordered the combination/sampler plate at Iron Works. Overall, I would give the Iron Works a slight edge over The Salt Lick based solely on the quality of the BBQ. I liked the brisket and sausage a little better at Iron Works and the ribs a little better at The Salt Lick.

When I first read about TripIt, I was interested. Now that I’ve tried it, I’m totally sold on the idea.

TripIt automatically builds up trip plans for you from the confirmation emails you receive when you book flights, hotel rooms, car rentals, etc. All you have to do is forward the emails to a tripit.com email address. You can also manually enter information or edit things that their software parsed incorrectly. I just set up two trips using confirmation emails from United and Southwest. TripIt imported the information flawlessly.

Currently, weather forecasts for near term trips and historical weather data for longer term trips is added to your trip pages. Links to maps, seatguru pages for the exact airplanes you will be flying on, flight check in and flight status web pages, etc. are also added.

You can easily give your friends access to summary information about your trips. This is great, because I often forward the confirmation emails for my business trips to my wife and she has to keep track of them herself if she wants to know exactly when I am going to be out of town. Now all she has to do is log in and she can see my up to date travel plans. You can even take this a step further and add other people as viewers or collaborators for a trip. That gives them access to even more details, and in the case of collaborators, allows them to edit the trip plans.

TripIt also supports iCal, so if use a calendar app like Google Calendar that also supports iCal, you can subscribe to the calendar feed for your TripIt plans. Unfortunately, the Sunbird Lightning calendar extension for Thunderbird doesn’t yet support iCal.

They also have a Listserv style API. You email it commands and it emails you back short summaries for things like your trips for today or some future day. You can also request just the flight, hotel or car rental plans. And in true Listserv style, if you send it an email with the command “help” in the body of the email, it will send back a helpful list of the supported commands. That could be very helpful if you have a cell phone with email service, but no mobile browser or a tiny screen. I tried accessing the site on my ancient Treo 600, but the page was way too big and took far too long to load. It would be really cool if they added an optimized site for mobiles.

Yet another cool feature is the TripClipper bookmarklet. After selecting some text on some other website, like info on a restaurant you want to go to on a trip, you select the TripIt bookmarklet (I keep a folder of useful bookmarklets in my Firefox personal toolbar) and then assign the clipping a date. Here’s one thing I thing could be improved, though. Even though I picked a date that fell within one of my trips, my clipping was added as a note under Unfiled Items. While it was easy enough to click on the move link to move it into the right trip, the date I assigned the clipping should have been enough information to automatically assign it.